Rebel Hell

The Pitch has learned that an unsettling discoverymade nearly two months ago by workers excavating land for a new downtown arena has put that project in doubt.

On April 25, workers digging at the site of the former UMB Bank branch at Grand Avenue and Truman Road discovered human remains and immediately contacted authorities, records obtained by the Pitch show. The unearthing of what turned out to be multiple grave sites has been kept from the public while city, county and state officials wrestle with the implications for the arena project.

Within weeks of the discovery, city officials were certain that the six grave sites represented a previously unknown downtown cemetery dating to the 1860s. Examination of the remains and the artifacts found with them suggest that all six were adult males who were dressed in military uniforms and had suffered violent deaths. The Pitch has learned that officials quietly consulted a panel of three military historians; late last month, the experts concluded that the deceased were Confederate soldiers referred to in the journals of officers who wrote about a violent confrontation in Kansas City in October 1864.

"If they're keeping this under wraps, I can understand it," says Fletcher Gray, a history professor at the University of Kansas, who examined documents obtained by the Pitch. "What you're showing me doesn't just mean they've made a significant historical discovery. It also means the sports arena is in serious jeopardy. Unless, of course, the city can work something out with Confederate interest groups."

Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes, Jackson County Executive Katheryn Shields and Gov. Matt Blunt declined to comment for this story, but all three have been intimately involved in an extraordinary series of negotiations since the discovery of the remains. Secrecy has been very tight around the entire episode. Last month, for example, officials were so concerned that the arena project's budget would be compromised by the delay that the arena's design was rapidly scaled down and released to the public with little explanation.

"A pillow? A life preserver? Jiffy Pop popcorn? Believe me, those criticisms were a relief when we heard them," one city official says about the local media's response to the new designs. The official spoke to the Pitch on the condition of anonymity. "You aren't going to believe what kind of changes are coming if Kay is going to keep the arena from blowing up entirely. She was awfully smart to unveil that ugly new design first, to prepare the public for what's coming later."

What's coming later is revealed by interviews with key sources close to the emergency negotiations that are still going on as this issue of the Pitch goes to print. This week, an official groundbreaking will be held for the arena, but it was scheduled before problems with the site arose and will largely be a ceremonial event, sources in the city tell the Pitch.

This much is certain: The discovery of six long-deceased rebel soldiers has thrown Kansas City and the state of Missouri into a crisis.

KU's Fletcher Gray was not among the three military historians consulted after the remains were uncovered, but the citations and photographs on the walls of his Lawrence home testify to his reputation as one of the country's foremost experts on the War Between the States.

Gray agreed to examine documents obtained by the Pitch that detail much about the discovery and subsequent examination of the remains unearthed downtown. Almost immediately, as he leafed through a large stack of records last week, Gray exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke and exclaimed, "There's no doubt about it. These bodies are clearly the remains of Barrett's Unfortunates."

Gray was referring to an event known to historians from the journals of several Confederate officers who were part of Maj. Gen. Sterling Price's Army of Missouri. The journals recount how Price's force was on a westward trek when, on October 23, 1864, the group clashed with Union soldiers led by Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis. Known today as the Battle of Westport, the skirmish would be the largest in the Kansas City area, resulting in the deaths of about 1,500 soldiers on each side. In the days before Price's soldiers ran into Curtis, they had been moving west from Jefferson City and had spent several days in and around present-day Kansas City, Missouri.

Gray quickly retrieved from his shelves a typescript of a journal by Capt. Joshua Phipps, who was one of several officers under Price who recorded an incident that occurred on October 19 or 20, 1864.

"Phipps notes that six men commanded by a Sgt. Barrett were ordered to enter the town of Kansas and retrieve supplies," Gray says. "Instead, they met their deaths. Even in the hastily jotted notes of a busy officer and masked by the language of propriety of the time, it was pretty clear what kind of supplies those boys were after."

The Phipps journal was one that Gray relied on for one of his seminal monographs about the war, "Rebel, Rebel, Your Face Is a Mess: Hygiene in the Armies of the West, 1861-65."

Piecing together multiple accounts available to historians, Gray says that Barrett's men entered a town that even in the mid-19th century was known for its wide-open ways.